Using a combine point pool for ability score and racial points, for character generation?

[Secane]

I'm starting a homebrew with characters from a magic heavy setting.
To reflect that, I thinking of giving the players the option to "customize" their characters extensively.

So this is the "ideal" -
35 points to make a character.
Players can spent up to 27 of these points for Ability Scores and up to of this points for Racial Points.

Some examples:

1) A Human (9rp) + 26 pointbuy = 35

1a) A Human with Fey Racial type (9rp + 2rp = 11rp) + 24 pointbuy = 35

2) Aasimar (15 rp) + 20 pointbuy = 35

Basically, the more abilities your race or custom race have, the less pointbuy you have for ability scores.

The ideal is to give players the option to make customized characters of their own, while balancing out character creation.

This will also encourage players to try out other races, insteal of them all playing a "stronger" race like Tiefling/Fetchling or Aasimars.
The more powerful your "race" the less points you get for buying ability scores.

What do you all think? Is this ideal fair? Any foreseeable problems?
Edited: Allowing up to 27 in ability score pointbuy to compensate that some normal races have rp as low as 8.

[Secane]

Anyone with any thoughts on this?

Is it balance to allow 1 for 1 trading of point buy and racial points?

[LoneKnave]

I don't know if it's balanced, but I like the idea very much!

[Snow_Tiger]

Agreed

[Darigaaz the Igniter]

I might try this for a one-shot

[LoneKnave]

Okay, so the immediate balance issue (after reading the race building guidelines), is that you can easily tweak your numbers to save stat points by buying the higher stat levels with build points.

For example, taking a stat from 16 (10 points) to 18 (17 points) takes 7 stat points. But picking up an Advanced Stat racial trait only costs 4.

There's a lot of tweaking/min maxing that can be done here.

Otherwise, it feels relatively balanced.

[Avon Rekaes]

This was my initial concern as well. Might want to put a caveat on racial ability traits. Say, stick with the 0-cost ability score traits, and disallow all others.

[Secane]

Thanks all for the input.

After talking to my players, I decided to cap the maximum number of Ability score points to 25.

This is after a player suggested playing one of the elemental races which have a RP of only 6. The ideal of allowing a 29 pointbuy character is just way too much.

I'm encouraging my players that pick races with low RP to spend some of the points given to make their characters more unique.

@LoneKnave and Avon Rekaes
Thanks for pointing that out!

I have informed my players that if they want to build a customized race, they will have to justify the ability scores given to such a race.

Currently I'm only allowing the modification of a base race and have disallow changes to ability scores.

[Mr_Shed]

I'd have to play around with this myself to figure out how balanced it feels to me, but gut instinct says that certain racial traits should be excluded (advanced stats and monstrous racial traits spring to mind). Otherwise it looks like it'd be a lot of fun to do; reminds me a lot of the character creation rules for Shadowrun where you have a flat pool of points to spend on everything for character creation - race, abilities, powers, gear, etc.

[Secane]

@Shed, you are right about the advanced stats. It is way too powerful.

I had to disallow a player using it once he showed me his stats.

I'm kinda glad I made it clear from the start go, that I reserve the right to disallow any options that is way too overpowered.

That said, I am seeing some creative uses of the race traits options. Got a player playing an Oread-Elf.